● Fri. April 25 ● Sat. April 26 ● Sunday April 27 ●
●●● Thursday, April 24, 2008 ●●● |
● Pre-Conference ● |
8:30 AM - 12:30 Noon |
| Laws & Ethics Workshop 1 – Steven Frankel, Ph.D., J.D. The Laws and Ethics Workshop covers emerging legal and ethical issues for mental health practitioners of all disciplines. The four-hour program addresses issues including confidentiality and privilege, note-taking, record-keeping, coping with subpoenas, the impact of professional society ethical codes on regulation of mental health practice, liability exposure with suicidal patients, and recent developments in “Tarasoff situations.” |
2:00 - 4:00 PM |
| Laws & Ethics Workshop 2 – Steven Frankel, Ph.D., J.D. This program focuses more closely on the needs of clinicians who fall into particularly high risk groups. Topics include confidentiality and privilege for children, coping with high-conflict divorce/custody families, the regressive impact of the regulatory environment on family therapy in particular, supervision/consultation issues that arise for professionals whose agency positions may include functions that conflict with ethical codes. |
●●● Friday, April 25, 2008 ●●● |
9:00-11:00 AM |
| Keynote Address 1 – Daniel Siegel, MD The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being Mindful awareness has been scientifically proven to promote social, emotional and physical well-being, and is an effective part of treatment to prevent relapse of drug addiction and chronic depression. Mindfulness also enhances empathy, and in that way may promote healthy interpersonal relationships. This ancient practice of being fully aware in the present moment, without grasping onto judgments, has been found in cultures around the world. At the heart of this proposal is that the state of mindful awareness harnesses specific social and emotional circuits in the brain. The development of these “resonance circuits” creates an integrated brain state that creates the benefits of improved immune and cardiac function, enhanced empathy and self-understanding, and a deeper connection to oneself and others. |
11:15 AM-12:15 PM |
| Dialogue 1 – Susan Johnson, EdD and Stan Tatkin, PsyD Key Concepts from Attachment Theory That Influence Your Work |
12:15-1:15 PM |
| Lunch |
1:15-2:15 PM |
| Keynote 2–Bessel van der Kolk, MD Frontiers of Treating Trauma Starting with a review of recent studies on the neurobiology of trauma, Dr. van der Kolk will examine the utility of approaches from the fields of hypnosis, body oriented therapies and EMDR, both with research data and videotaped clinical interventions. The integration of these approaches during different stages of treatment will be discussed. |
2:30-5:30 PM |
| Workshop 1 – Otto Kernberg, MD Assessment of Couples This workshop will explore the assessment of the functioning of couples in their sexual life, their daily interactions, and their individual and jointly arrived at value systems. The techniques of this assessment, the combination of couples’ and individual partners’ interviews will be followed by an overview of alternative therapeutic strategies. |
| Workshop 2 – Bessel van der Kolk, MD The Effects of Stress and Trauma on Relationships: Principles The majority of people who seek psychiatric care have histories of trauma, chaos or neglect. Advances in the neurosciences, attachment research and in information processing show how brain function is shaped by experience, and that life itself can continually transform perception and biology. Overwhelming experiences alter the capacity for self-regulation and memory processing due to changes in sub-cortical, i.e., “unconscious” levels of the brain. The memory imprints of the trauma(s) are held in bodily states and physical action patterns, which causes the entire human organism to automatically react to current experiences as a replay of the past. This workshop includes: Affective neuroscience for thoughtful clinicians; Introduction to the neurobiology of attachment, the nature of the threat response, attention, exploration and concentration, as well as lessons from neuro-managing and psychophysiology. |
Workshop 3 - Susan Johnson, EdD |
5:45-6:45 PM |
| Book signing |
●●● Saturday, April 26, 2008 ●●● |
8:30-9:30 AM |
| Keynote 3 – Otto Kernberg, MD Love and Aggression in Couples Therapy This presentation will explore the expression of basic conflicts between love and aggression in a couple’s sexual life, their daily interactions, and their value systems. The analysis of chronic couples’ conflicts will be followed by the outline of an essentially psychoanalytic approach to their diagnostic assessment, and the characteristics of analytic and supportive strategies of treatment. |
9:45 AM-12:15 PM |
| Workshop 4 – Bessel van der Kolk, MD The Effects of Stress and Trauma on Relationships: Treatment Effective treatment of post-traumatic problems needs to include addressing the imprint of trauma on the physical experience of the self as helpless and in danger. Recovery needs to incorporate dealing with defensive efforts that helped ensure survival, incorporate physical experiences that contradict feelings and sensations associated with helplessness and disconnection, as well as an effective way of integrating fragmented memories of trauma. Experiencing physical mastery (as in yoga and specific body based techniques) often is necessary to initiate new ways of perceiving reality and promote new behavior patterns. Helping the organism to bring the traumatic experience to an end is the goal of treatment. Workshop includes: Assessment and treatment planning; Recognition and treatment of trauma-based action patterns and dissociative responses; Completing of incomplete trauma responses; Words, actions, and relationships in the treatment of learned helplessness and dissociation; Specific techniques that address affect regulation, the integration of dissociated aspects of experience, overcoming helplessness, and the re-integration of human conditions. |
| Workshop 5 – Ellyn Bader, PhD A Developmental Approach to Couples Therapy: An Introduction to Attachment and Differentiation in Couples Therapy Using a developmental lens is a powerful way to lead couples to make sustained change. Learn how developmental principles can help you assess what is wrong and then guide and shape your treatment decisions. Videotapes and clinical case examples will be used throughout the workshop to demonstrate how to challenge symbiosis, facilitate differentiation and build the capacities to sustain intimacy. |
| Workshop 6 – Otto Kernberg, MD The Technique of Analytic Couples Therapy This workshop will summarize the overall technical principles of interpretive intervention in sessions of couples therapy. Economics and dynamic criteria of intervention, analysis of transference and countertransference will be explored together with the setting up of basic frames for the interaction in the sessions. Clinical examples will illustrate these approaches. |
12:15-1:15 PM |
| Lunch |
1:15-2:15 PM |
| Keynote 4 – Susan Johnson, EdD The Science of Love: Lessons for the Couple Therapist Love is no longer a mystery. Attachment Theory and research offers the couple therapist a systematic understanding of the emotional drama of relationship distress, a compass in the defining moves and moments of love. With such a guide, we can now help couples heal their relationships and create relationships that heal. |
2:15-3:15 PM |
| Dialogue 2 – Ellyn Bader, PhD and Esther Perel, MA Key Concepts from Differentiation Theory That Influence Your Work |
3:30-6:00 PM |
| Workshop 7 – Susan Johnson, EdD The Treatment of Personal and Relationship Trauma in EFT This workshop will offer a theoretical and clinical orientation to the treatment of trauma, personal and relational, in couples therapy. The regulation of emotion and the healing power of attachment events will be emphasized. |
| Workshop 8 – Ellyn Bader, PhD Differentiation: The Route to Intimacy and Vitality Despite their expressed desire for change, many couples rerun repetitive negative cycles. Partners frequently demand intimacy, while refusing to be intimate themselves. Their defensive interactions will dominate the relationship and lead to traumatic interactions, affairs, and other relationship ruptures. Learn how to use differentiation to breathe new life into combative and emotionally distant relationships. |
| Workshop 9 – Esther Perel, MA, LMFT Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence The story of sex in committed modern couples is one that often tells of a dwindling desire that includes a long list of sexual alibis, claiming to explain the inescapable death of Eros. The absence of fantasy, the proliferation of pornography and affairs, as well as a lack of understanding of the nature of erotic desire all contribute to the predicament. This workshop examines the cultural pressures that shape domesticated sex and the puzzling inverse correlation between greater emotional intimacy and the loss of sexual desire. Using case examples and video vignettes, Ms. Perel will demonstrate how to help couples draw pleasure from the hidden, the suggestive and the uncanny while also respecting their needs for safety and stability. We will explore how to grant the body its profound capacities for communicating in its own language, how couples can voice their erotic longings and move beyond their familiar comfort zone into an expansive, fully charged sexuality. This model applies to young, old, married and not, heterosexual and same sex couples. |
●●● Sunday, April 27, 2008 ●●● |
8:30-9:30 AM |
| Keynote 5 – Helen Fisher, PhD Who We Love Anthropologist Helen Fisher will examine the biological and behavioral interactions between three primary brain systems for mating and reproduction: the sex drive, romantic love and attachment. She will discuss her brain studies (fMRI) of romantic love and rejection in love to explain the biological underpinnings of love at first sight, abandonment rage, romantic addictions and some crimes of passion. She will discuss her newest research, using data on two million members of the Internet dating/relationship site Chemistry.com, to give a theory for why men and women fall in love with one person rather than another. She proposes that humans have evolved four basic biological variants of personality (referring to these behavioral syndromes as the Explorer, Builder, Negotiator and Director), associated with the neurochemicals dopamine, serotonin, estrogen and testosterone. She will discuss the genetic and physiological underpinnings and specific traits associated with each type. Dr. Fisher will conclude with a discussion of the assets and deficits of each type of biological match. |
9:45 AM-12:15 PM |
| Workshop 10 – Helen Fisher, PhD Who You Love In this workshop, participants will take Fisher’s 56-item questionnaire and discuss the specific biological traits (positive and negative) associated with her four bio-behavioral types, the Explorer, Builder, Negotiator and Director. She will then explore in depth the assets and deficits of each type of biological match. The workshop concludes with a discussion of the assets and deficits of each type of biological match. |
| Workshop 11 – Peter Pearson, PhD Breakthroughs with High Conflict Couples High conflict and chronically distresses add to each others’ trauma while triggering historical trauma. Reducing, calming or eliminating the emotional triggers is an essential part of changing their negative ingrained patterns. See a live demonstration and/or experience a process to bring about immediate relief of painful memories (and sometimes) not even having to talk about them. |
| Workshop 12 – Stan Tatkin, PsyD The Loving/Warring Brain: How the Brain, Mind and Body Interacts and Reacts to Intimacy Is our brain built for love or war, connection or self-preservation? The attachment drive for a secure base involves neurological and neuro-endocrine systems and subsystems that determine such things as proximity seeking and contact maintenance. Couples most commonly enter therapy due to repeated, anticipated, and intense periods of mutual dysregulation whereby attachment injuries and adaptations become reanimated. In order to make the most of attachment theory, the psychotherapist must incorporate a working knowledge of the neurobiological processes that underlie all primary attachment relationships. |
12:15-1:15 PM |
| Lunch |
1:15-2:15 PM |
| Dialogue 3 – Louis Cozolino, PhD, Peter Pearson, PhD, Stan Tatkin, PsyD Key Concepts from Neuroscience That Influence Your Couples Work |
2:30-5:00 PM |
| Workshop 13 – Esther Perel, MA, LMFT Couples from a Tourist Lens: A Multicultural Approach on Sexuality Couples’ expectations about the role of sexuality in intimate relationships have changed dramatically over the past 40 years. We will explore the main ideas of the romantic ideal: how we want our partner to fulfill our needs for connection, belonging and continuity, as well as give the sense of transcendence, mystery and passion. Examining the cultural values of love and respect, freedom and responsibility, and interdependence vs. autonomy, we will map a culturally relevant approach to work with the dilemmas of desire in couples. We also will probe the difference between clearly assigned gender role repartition and the post-feminist egalitarian model. |
| Workshop 14 – Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT Addiction to “Alone Time”: Avoidant Attachment, Narcissism, and a One-Person Psychology within a Two-Person Psychological System Comparisons have been made between severe avoidant attachment and disorders of the self such as antisocial personality, schizoid personality, and narcissistic personality. Each of these disorders, including avoidant attachment, can be grouped together as one-person psychological organizations in that they operate outside of a truly interactive dyadic system, and primarily rely upon themselves for stimulation and calming via auto-regulation. The chronic need for “alone time” can take many surprising forms throughout the lifespan, directly impacting romantic relationships. |
| Workshop 15 – Louis Cozolino, PhD The Evolutionary Necessity of Couples Therapy In the course of human evolution, our brains have been shaped by countless adaptational challenges resulting in an organ functioning simultaneously in the conscious present and our primitive and hidden past. This presentation will explore aspects of the human brain which make sustained intimate relationships both possible and problematic. |
5:00-5:15 PM |
| Closing Remarks |